Who was history's first pot smoker?

New research reveals that residents of western China were consuming, and possibly growing cannabis, as a drug as early as 2,500 years ago

Thousands of years before the first American stoners hotboxed their mom’s car, Chinese mourners were gathering around a pile of smouldering cannabis, breathing in its psychoactive smoke.

While people living in the area around eastern China have been growing cannabis for its oil for millennia, new research published in Science Advances reveals that residents of western China were consuming, and possibly growing it, as a drug as early as 2,500 years ago.

Researchers recently uncovered 10 braziers (something akin to ancient barbeques, but instead of charcoal briquettes, they used hot stones) from the Jirzankal burial site, which is marked with alternating strips of black and white stones high up in the mountains.

They also found harps, bowls and evidence of other items being burned, so they knew the artifacts were likely used as part of the burial ritual.

Wooden braziers and a skeleton found in the tomb M12 as they were exposed in the excavations at an archaeological site in western China that provided evidence for the burning of cannabis at a cemetery locale roughly 2,500 years ago, is shown in this image from the Pamir Mountains in Xinjiang region, released from Beijing, China, on June 12, 2019.Courtesy Xinhua Wu/Handout via REUTERS

But they weren’t sure what was being burned in the braziers. So, they took samples of the centuries-old residue from those burners and from some of the stones found inside the burners. What they discovered was evidence of one of the earliest examples ever recorded of people using cannabis for its mind-altering effects.

The residue contained a substance called cannabinol (CBN), a distinct marker of cannabis plants containing high levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in the plant. The residue also lacked traces of cannabidiol (CBD), found in cannabis plants with low levels of THC.

“We can start to piece together an image of funerary rites that included flames, rhythmic music, and hallucinogenic smoke, all intended to guide people into an altered state of mind,” write the study’s authors.

The excavation of a tomb from an archaeological site in western China that provided evidence for the burning of cannabis at a cemetery locale roughly 2,500 years ago, is shown in this image from the Pamir Mountains in Xinjiang region, released from Beijing, China, on June 12, 2019.Xinhua Wu/Handout via REUTERS

Where did the ancient Chinese get their weed?

Researchers have long been fascinated with early pot-smokers. Cannabis is one of the most popular psychoactive drugs in the world today, but little is known about how early cultures discovered its hallucinogenic potential.

It may have something to do with the Silk Road, according to the authors of “The Origins of Cannabis Smoking”

Remains discovered at the Jirzankal site show people from all over the region were buried there. Archeologists have also found silk unique to Eastern China in the burial site, next to beads and harps from the Middle East.

In this photo received by AFP on June 11, 2019 from the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a wooden brazier (burner) and stones used to burn cannabis that was excavated from the Jirzankal cemetery, located northeast of Qushiman Village in the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang province, is displayed.Xinhua Wu / Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences / AFP

“The dispersal of cannabis across the mountain barriers may have played a role in driving the higher THC levels of these specific varieties,” write the study’s authors.

Another theory: The stress of the high elevations of the burial sites — less oxygen, colder temperatures — could have led to increased levels of THC in the cannabis. So, it’s possible the burial sites may have even been built high up in the mountains for ease of access to highly potent plants.

That means the influence of cannabis on human culture could date back more than two millennia.

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